PR and the Pentagon

...For the problem in doing anything more positive stems from the fact that the non-military aspects are not institutionalized...

...A criterion has been established by the Navy, for example, on the question of relations with the movie industry: If a movie serves the informational and recruiting purposes of the Defense Department, the Navy will offer its "full cooperation...

...This does not mean that greater control should not be exerted by the Secretary of Defense in barring informational programs that clearly advance private interests with public funds, or that deliberately twist facts to portray a false picture of our security posture or requirements...

...Our job is to make the facts available . . . in order that the reporter may objectively interpret for himself what we are doing and why we are doing it, whether he agrees with us or not...

...Taylor's statement was originally distributed to official Army publications "in order that Army personnel may be informed on this subject...

...In the final analysis, however, there is no institutional solution to the dilemma raised by military publicity...

...Indeed, it is increasingly difficult to determine the practical conditions, other than open aggression, under which the U.S...

...There is little overt evidence that public exposure of service differences was abated...

...In presenting his proposals to Congress, President Eisenhower emphasized that one of his objectives was to control "defense dollars spent in publicity and influence campaigns in which each service claims superiority over the others...

...The key to wise policy decisions lies in the fullest possible interplay of all viewpoints within the context of our political process...

...Lincoln While...

...All of these efforts and the total range of our diplomatic activities are geared to the twin objectives of our Middle East policy: to relieve tensions in the area and insulate it from Soviet penetration...

...Nevertheless, the non-military aspects of national security hardly get the publicity and the support that the military services can muster...

...including assistance in preparing or revising the script, loan of equipment and material, access to the unedited and unclassified official motion-picture files and clearance to operate inside naval installations...

...Without assuming a false role, it could attack the non-military factors of national security more aggressively than it does and consciously project the force of these efforts into public view...

...Military information offices also feed ideas and material to such service-created private groups as the Association of the U.S...

...decisions have to be made that affect taxes, jobs and national prestige...

...But a balanced view of national security can emerge from the political process only if there is intelligent political leadership and a broad public understanding of the problems involved...

...The key to curbing the public outbreak of service rivalry lies in wise policy decisions on strategic programs and not in administrative decisions on informational programs...

...Not only does the State Department have to take a broad view of national security and consciously integrate military programs with its own efforts, but it does not have the highly disciplined personnel, devoted alumni, industrial allies and domestic facilities of the military...

...would actually use force...

...The Army, Navy and Air Force are in continual competition for resources and prestige, not only with each other but often with the Secretary of Defense as GENE M. LYONS, of the Dartmouth College Department of Government, is now engaged in defense policy research...

...The Senate Armed Services Committee's severe cutback of the Army's request to develop its Nike-Hercules air-defense program was taken by the Army as a dangerous threat to its established responsibility in this area...

...It is not obstinacy that has led Congress to insist that military leaders be free to speak their minds before Congressional committees without fear of reprisals from their civilian chiefs...

...It was undoubtedly a certain impatience with State Department practices in this respect that led the Democratic Advisory Council to call for the establishment of a National Peace Agency to work exclusively on problems of disarmament and the peaceful uses of scientific and technological resources...

...A certain amount of selection in releasing defense information is vital, therefore, and this can deteriorate into an effective method of furthering the aims of a particular faction to the disadvantage of a broadly conceived public interest...

...Each service, moreover, is its own interpreter of what is in the national interest, and there exists no articulate public group—farmers, labor or the business community—which is directly concerned with the substance of military programs and can thus be used as a measuring rod of what conies closest to being truly in the public interest...

...In addition, more than one viewpoint may be strongly supported within the Defense Department on any major issue...

...Beginning in 1952, Congress wrote an annual limitation on such activities into the Defense Appropriation Act...

...The purpose was to check open manifestations of inter-service rivalry and, presumably, the intensity of service-created pressures on Congressmen...

...The Air Force championship of the cause of strategic airpower need hardly be emphasized to make the point unanimous...

...The sheer amount of energy generated by defense operations is bound to arouse considerable interest—sometimes when Pentagon officials want it least...

...THE IMPACT of Pentagon publicity on American life can be traced largely to the emergence of security as a major peacetime concern since 1945...

...One tangible consequence, however, was the estimated $325,000 that the Defense Department and the services spent in policing the provisions...

...The second attempt to check service publicity tactics was made under the 1958 Defense Reorganization Act...

...If it doesn't, cooperation will be refused entirely or limited to technical advice on the military aspects of the film and minimum logistical support...

...There are serious bars to the State Department performing in the manner of the military services in this respect...

...Questions are asked by reporters...

...From the Pentagon they extend to the halls of Congress, to the troop information center in every Army camp, Naval station and Air Force base in the United States, to the community relations programs in cities and towns housing these installations, and to the mass media centers in New York, Hollywood and Chicago...

...For another, they attempted to discourage controversy within the context of a political system which fervently encourages open dispute...

...How does it influence the public image of our security requirements...

...What is more, the chief consequence of successfully stifling all public demonstrations of inter-service controversy would be the exposure of a single Administration view of national security policy...

...Nevertheless, it was quickly picked up by the major daily newspapers and found its way into subsequent reconsideration of the whole air-defense problem by both Congress and the executive branch...

...THE SERVICES' differences on military strategy and resources allocation are thus highly germane to their public relations activities...

...Why is the military in the publicity business...

...A clear example of its ineffectiveness was offered (luring the 1959 budget dispute between the Air Force and the Army over primary responsibility for the air-defense mission...

...Yet the fact of the matter is that this is only part—though a vital part—of our security posture...

...In this respect, Pentagon publicity tends to distort the public image of our security requirements...

...Army, the Navy League and the Air Force Association: to large industrial firms that share in defense contracts or use military themes to sponsor their products: and to service-oriented reserve, professional and patriotic groups like the Reserve Officers Association, the American Ordnance Association and various veterans associations...

...The reasons why these attempts to stifle genuine service disagreement have been unsuccessful are not difficult to suggest...

...Congressmen know that without the data and interpretations that military leaders provide, they have little basis for questioning the military policies of the administration...

...In an area of governmental activity where the executive holds all the trump cards, where the requirements of security classification can be used to bury legitimate opposition within the Government, where there is no pressure group that can make a meaningful impact on the policy process without help from executive departments, and where such a tremendous part of national resources are being devoted, democratic controls over executive power would become weaker than they already are...

...To meet this situation General Taylor, then Chief of Staff, made public a blistering attack on the competing Air Force Bomarc system...

...The "principle" of placing considerable authority over the military departments in the hands of an Assistant Secretary was quickly disputed by Congressmen who sought to protect the operating integrity of the individual services against the increasing centralization of defense authority...

...Chief of its News Division, has described the philosophy of his job in these terms: "We do not regard ourselves as salesmen of any product other than the facts...

...It was thus ostensibly promulgated within the provisions of the troop-information program, bypassing the limitations of the Defense Appropriation Act and the need for prior scrutiny by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs...

...The $40 billion-plus defense budget, the 2.5 million men in peacetime service, and the far-flung implications of military-supported scientific research and industrial development make news every day...

...There are two purposes for a public relations program in any Government agency: first, to collect, tabulate and circulate basic information that Congress and the public need to be reasonably knowledgeable about complicated programs: second, to exert pressures within the legislative process in order to further those programs...

...IF MILITARY publicity cannot and should not be stifled, its impact on the public image of our security requirements is an issue of some concern...

...Congressmen, lobbyists: developments at home and abroad have to be interpreted in terms of national security...

...Similarly, the first objective of all Navy public information activities is deemed to be "public understanding of the continuing importance of seapower as an instrument of prosperity, as a manifestation of national strength coupled with good will, as a deterrent to war, and as an essential element of national strength in time of war...

...To illustrate, General Maxwell Taylor, in his final report as Army Chief of Staff, pointed out that "the character of [the information] program has been shaped by the need for troop and public comprehension of the Army's role as an indispensable element of our national war-deterrent posture...

...Despite these handicaps, the efforts of the State Department are markedly anemic...

...Not only do we conduct our own economic aid projects, but we actively support and were largely responsible for a variety of UN activities in the area—the program for aid to Arab refugees, the truce observation teams on the borders between Israel and her neighbors, the Emergency Force in the Suez Canal area and the "presence" in Jordan...

...another was the built-in excuse it offered for withholding embarrassing information requested by newsmen and writers...

...There is a difference, however, between a false picture and a controversial one...

...They are, indeed, completely candid in this respect...

...In the Middle East, for example, American policy is based on considerably more than the deterrent power of the Sixth Fleet roving the Mediterranean...

...Elaborate procedures were established to administer the limiting provisions of the act, which were generally interpreted to apply to "actual contact with public . . . news media representatives, and . . . preparation of material—solicited and unsolicited—for actual use by such media...

...Is public relations a proper function of the armed services...

...Tangentially, reference is often made to the United Nations, disarmament or economic aid as methods of meeting world responsibilities...

...For one thing, a good deal of military information is under heavy security classification...

...For one thing, they sought to apply administrative solutions to a problem that is basically political...

...And the success of these weapons is perhaps attested to by the fact that two major attempts have been made in recent years to limit their use...

...well...

...Curbs on Pentagon information programs and greater energy and imagination in State Department public relations are certainly called for...

...But the full impact of missile models in cereal boxes, of the aircraft industry's military-oriented advertising, and of the national press conferences of top military leaders is that our national security is dependent on our ability to use, or threaten to use, armed force...

...So it is not surprising that since World War II the defense establishment has organized and intensified its relations with the public in a manner calculated to put its best foot forward...

...But a more balanced public view of national security would not necessarily come from underplaying the military aspects, even if it were possible to do so...

...Clearly, this approach leads to a kind of sterility in public relations and is in sharp contrast to the operating philosophy of military publicity chiefs...

...The fact is, of course, that the Army, Navy and Air Force actively encourage the use of military themes and, wherever they can, seek to insure that a favorable image of military life is portrayed...

...Nor can it support, in the way the services do, non-governmental groups such as the American Association for the UN or the Foreign Policy Association...

...In practical terms, the Presidential directive was no more successful than Congress' financial limitation in checking the public outburst of service differences...

...In the Defense Department, both these purposes are considerably more involved than, say, in the Department of Agriculture...

...Despite references to the overall objectives of the Defense Department, however, it is almost inevitable that each service will emphasize its own contribution to the broad objectives of national security...

...Anyone critical of State Department publicity would, in all sincerity, have to question the degree to which the department should become an active advocate of disarmament, economic aid and other non-military aspects of national security in order to act as a counter-balance to the military departments in the development of public opinion...

...Despite their differences, there is understandably heavy emphasis in all service information programs on the military aspects of national security...

...It is almost irrelevant to suggest that the non-military aspects of our policy would be ineffective without the protective umbrella of the Sixth Fleet, for it is questionable to what extent we would be prepared to release the power of the Sixth Fleet in response to the ambiguous kinds of danger these non-military aspects of national security are designed to meet...

...Indeed, their publicity facilities have most frequently been major weapons in the political struggle for recognition, funds and legislative and public support...

...Once the act was passed, he proceeded to put heavy responsibility for supervision of service publicity on the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs...

...Beyond all this, books would be written, plays and movies acted, and children's games and toys constructed along military themes even without the urging of the services...

...At the same time, they are aware that public resources could easily be exploited for private purposes with little beneficial return in terms of the objectives of public programs...

...Such activities as troop information, community relations and providing information to the "general" public (that is, other than to representatives of the mass media) did not come under the limiting conditions...